I finally got around to starting up PoP: The Two Thrones on a hungover Sunday, after picking up the game cheap and knowing I'd play it at some point, and it totally has me hooked in the same way Sands of Time did. I have Warrior Within, never found it all that engaging and gave up on it maybe a quarter of the way through, but Two Thrones is fun. It's maybe not as polished as the first one, but the gameplay itself seems a little tighter, both in platforming and combat. And the speed kill system is a great way to have a sort of steath/puzzler approach to fighting. Especially when you can chain the kills together - mega cool.

And I know a bunch of you have played the game already, but I just had to shout out. Much better than the second game, in my opinion, and only lesser than the first in that the novelty has kind of worn off. (And the writing isn't as good.) If you enjoyed the first one, Two Thrones is a great purchase. Reminds me why video games are fun.

Dafones, I pretty much agree with everything you said. I think the pure gameplay in TTT is the best in the series, but the first game stilll has a certain magic to it that puts it at the top of the heap.

I agree with you both. The first one was simply amazing. But the third one has the benefit of some very refined gameplay. I was a good ways in to this one when my 360 came along and distracted me from it. Hmm, perhaps it's time to go back, but I'm just afraid I've lost my princely skills.

The Two Thrones starts well, but it devolves into mediocrity as it goes. The speed kill system is awesome at first, but as the game progresses it quickly wears out its welcome. The story and atmosphere isn't nearly as good as it was in the first game, and the platforming isn't as nearly as good as it was in the second game.

What I find interesting is that playing The Two Thrones makes me want to go back and complete Warrior Within, and I probably will, after I'm done with TTT.

I picked up both games when they went cheap. I'm currently forcing myself to finish Warrior Within before going on to TTT, which is pretty hard since WW has become a bit more of a chore. I think I'm halfway through and I honesty have lost interest in the story (I really don't care where I'm going and why). The platforming is pretty awesome though, but its the combat that I don't really care for (especially when they throw wave after wave of enemies in a tight space where you can't use your acrobatic advantage)

is there more of a story in TTT? something where I'll be motivated to see what happens next??

It was the combat in WW that turned me off as well, but I've found through playing TTT that I've really underutilized the slow down feature when fighting. As long as you get sand back when you take out a baddie, using slow almost guarentees a kill, which fills you back up so that you can hit slow once again for the next chump

It's a little repetative, but makes the combat easier. I just can't remember if the sand is as abundant in WW as it is in TTT.

Still playing, still enjoying, but man, man did that sub-boss fight after the second chariot race drain my spirits. It's not necessarily a bad fight on it's own, but I must have attempted a dozen sessions against the sword-and-axe twins without scratching them before I was sent weeping to game faqs to see just what the fuck I was doing wrong.

And it turns out that it's not a complicated fight pattern/mechanic, it's just impossible to foresee, to pick up on. It's rather sloppy game design, in my opinion, and my only real negative thought on the game. Everything else has been pretty damn entertaining.

But damn it, I didn't want to have to be a chump and look at a guide for help. Lord knows how long I would have kept playing (or had the patience to keep playing) before I accidentally sumbled on the correct strategy to beat those two.

Still playing, still enjoying, but man, man did that sub-boss fight after the second chariot race drain my spirits. It's not necessarily a bad fight on it's own, but I must have attempted a dozen sessions against the sword-and-axe twins without scratching them before I was sent weeping to game faqs to see just what I was doing wrong.

Still playing, still enjoying, but man, man did that sub-boss fight after the second chariot race drain my spirits. It's not necessarily a bad fight on it's own, but I must have attempted a dozen sessions against the sword-and-axe twins without scratching them before I was sent weeping to game faqs to see just what I was doing wrong.

I don't get the hate for that boss fight. The one against the two guys? IIRC, doesn't the game show a cut scene early in the fight that indicates exactly what needs to be done?

No, you're only told what to do after you've figured it out.

Now, you could easily fluke out, focus solely on the swordsman right from the get go, stumble upon the "trick" to the battle, and never encounter a problem. Or, you could spend half an hour not understanding how to beat the two of them when they are able to block everything you try and your time powers are rendered useless against them. Like me.

Again, it's not a difficult fight, but there's no way to know how to win it unless you happen to hate the guy with the sword more than the guy with the axe.

The other issue is that the second chariot race can be kind of difficult, so it's tempting to use up your sandtanks during the race which leaves you empty for the fight. At least, that's what happened to me- I had to beat the fight without any sandtanks because I didn't feel like redoing the Chariot segment.

See I never found the chariot sequences all that tough so when I arrived at Tweedles Dee & Dumb I had all my tanks ready to go. Used up quickly, they soon were. I agree it's poor design to tell you the trick after the fight. On the other hand, I thought the story was solid but the character development/redemption angle was what put it over the top for me. The return to the SoT storyline felt like I was finally playing the true continuation of the saga. While the final boss was teh suck the final cinematic made up for it by what the prince said.

I liked the final boss because having it being based on platforming skill vice combat skill seemed very appropriate.

I agree that the concept was sound, but it felt extremely cliched compared to the boss fight in the original. In SoT the enemy isn't the Vizier, it's the environment. That's why I think everyone was thrown by how easily the old guy was dispatched. He's 80-something and suffering from TB. Of course he's going down in two hits. But the end boss in TTT was a lot trickier and it didn't feel very original to me. Nor did it feel like a "major epic watershed moment of good-versus-evil" considering the circumstances of the entire TTT story.

The final boss sucks. I hate it. It's crappy combat leading to crappy platforming that I never seem to have enough time to figure out. Then a plasma-blob-of-sand-shit-nonsense is fired at me at some awkward point in the mid-air sequence and I can't reverse time to get away from it. Fuck it.

Speed platforming is fine as long as the path is obvious. I don't mind the presure. But here, I can't tell what the hell is in front of me to save my life, and I don't have the time to properly assess my surroundings or else I get shit-kicked. It's bullshit, and either lazy or clueless game design. And considering that the section just before it was a great stretch of platforming, it just seems like an even bigger slap in the face.

I'll finish the game some time in the future, but for now, I'm totally turned off. And so close to being done too. What a joke.

So, um, I, uh, I decided to give the game one last try, and I pushed through it. Still think it's a sloppy way to end, but I did dig the final spinning camera move as you attack.

Plus, the final "sand world" was trippy as shit. And yes, the ending cinematic was a cool way to end ... but I had to laugh, because it also reminded me of just how good the first game was, and that I wasn't playing it.

The Two Thrones is a better game that Warrior Within, but still not the enthralling experience of Sands of Time.

... the strange, golden bird-like monstrosity that the Visier had become.

The combat itself wasn't particularily hard, and wasn't the issue for me (though on my very first run through the game glitched on me, and one of the statues that he fires at you got stuck spinning around the Prince, which meant I couldn't attack him, he couldn't attack me, and I thought it was part of the game for a few minutes until I got sick of it and reset).

What sucked was the floating platforming after the combat that I had trouble making sense of under the time constraint. I'd be hit by the Visier's, and I definitely want to say it again, "plasma-blob-of-sand-shit-nonsense " at an awkward point in the platforming, and I'd be unable to recover by rewinding time. I was basically fucked. And it happened a few times, which means I had to do the boring combat portion all over again. The platforming wasn't difficult either, just not intuative. To me.

So this is why the final platforming element of the true end boss fight rubbed me the wrong way. At least the last attack looked stylish as hell. And the cool-down epilogue against the Dark Prince let me enjoy the game just a little more before it was truly over, which I was thankful for.